2011/01/01 by Ed Hodge, Janece McDonald, Matt J. Fischer +8 · 43 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Cave #Geography #Geology #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Holocene #Mineralogy #Paleontology #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Radiocarbon dating #Speleothem #Stalagmite
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0033822200056605
published in Radiocarbon 53(2), 345-357 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2011/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Three modern speleothems were sampled at high resolution for radiocarbon analysis to identify their bomb-pulse signatures and to construct chronologies. Each speleothem exhibited a different 14 C response, presumed to be related to site characteristics such as vegetation, temperature, rainfall, depth below the surface, and water pathway through the aquifer. Peak 14 C activity for WM4 is 134.1 pMC, the highest cited thus far in the literature and suggestive of a lower inertia at this site. Dead carbon fractions for each stalagmite were calculated and found to be relatively similar for the 3 speleothems and lower than those derived from Northern Hemisphere speleothems. An inverse modeling technique based on the work of Genty and Massault (1999) was used to estimate soil carbon residence times. For each speleothem, mean soil 14 C reservoir ages differed greatly between the 3 sites, ranging from 2–6.5 to 32–46 yr.